4 ...proudly brought to you by Mazda. Tonight on Sunday, should be stay GM-free? I loved Hawke's Bay with the wonderful fruit and bright sunshine. Clean, green and proudly GM-free. This is going to be sold all round the world. But should that stop his neighbours fighting drought? You're saying it will grow faster? Yes. And reduce greenhouse emissions? That's right. A new battle is brewing. He was extraordinarily rude and didn't listen to a word we said. Yes, it was a robust discussion. I am not going to have people dying on my watch because of stupid council rules around GMO. (PHONE RINGS) She said, 'I was on a retreat with your son. Matthew died. He died three days ago.' Matthew, a young Kiwi, had told her he'd gone to Peru to try a natural high. My world stopped that day. He's a 24-year-old kid for God's sakes. He shouldn't be dead. He went there to become a better person. Ayahuasca, the drug that's on the bucket list for thousands of young travellers. If something goes wrong out here you're a long way from help. Looking for answers inside the Amazon's money-making ayahuasca retreats. I just have a few questions about the death of Matthew Dawson-Clarke. Captions by Anne Langford. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 Kia ora. I'm Miriama Kamo. Could the GM gene genie be back? Once again, sides are being taken in a battle for hearts and minds. The genetic modification-free lobby believe they've captured hearts. The science community and some farmers say they have the minds. It's all around the Government's resource management reforms which lie on the brink of defeat this week because of a fight over councils' GM-free zones. So, who's got it right? Here's Mark Crysell. Sunny Hastings, slap bang in the middle of the nation's food basket; a billion-dollar bounty trading off a GM-free label. While the consumers are so strongly saying they don't want GMOs, why on earth should we go ahead blindly and produce them? But a battle's brewing over GM-free regions... For a neighbour to impose a way to farm on another farmer, just doesn't seem right. ...and central government's right to override local council rules. I think GM for free zones within councils are meaningless. Under Hastings District Council rules, the productive land must be GM-free. That means no GMOs or genetically modified organisms allowed. Feel-good nonsense or just feeling good? I want to leave the place better than I arrived in terms of air, water and soil. You're doing a beautiful job. Like his apple trees, John Bostock grew up here. I love Hawke's Bay with the wonderful fruit and bright sunshine. John's an orchardist. 20 years ago he decided to go organic. Why organic? Well, my great and wonderful late wife, Vicki, was determined that she should bring up the kids in a clean environment without agrichemicals, so she basically told me. It was a brave move and hard work. Organic farming is more reliant on good basic science than conventional farming where often problems are just fixed by reaching for the agrichemical can. At the time, all apple sales had to go through ENZA, the apple and pear marketing board. And they made it compulsory to spray nasty organophosphates if you wanted to export. Our friends and the locals thought we'd gone off the deep end and we were mung bean-eating, sandal-wearing hippies, and that we had no chance. So he bought his own export business and went off and found an organic market. It's taken a while, but slowly they noticed there was a real market and they could see that we were starting to prosper and do well, and we've kind of become mainstream now. And you're not wearing sandals? They're in the wardrobe. (LAUGHS) Now, 20 years later, consumers worldwide are paying a premium for what John Bostock grows. This is a controlled atmosphere, cool-store facility. State-of-the-art equipment. 800 employees ` 600 part-time and 200, mainly local, full-time. Many are from Hawke's Bay iwi Ngati Kahungunu. How's it going here? Good. Beautiful colour. I think to have a truly sustainable business, you need to be supporting your community, you need to be helping the environment. His boys, all grown up, run a successful organic free-range chicken venture amongst the apple orchards. And Bostock employees get to eat lunch alongside their boss from a subsidised organic kitchen, complete with a French chef. I always feel alone. We've got some people whose health has improved, their work rate, and being able to sustain themselves right through to the end of the day by having a balanced diet of protein, vegetables and some salad, has made an incredible difference. I love their chicken, man. Sure, the Bostock food empire also includes Rush Munro ice cream and non-organic crops like onions and squash, but it's the organic apples at the core. This is going to be sold all around the world. So this goes to America, Europe, UK, right across Asia, and they're in huge demand at the moment. So how many will you be sending out this year? I'll send a million organic boxes of apples around the world. And next year? It's going up. We'll double in the next 10 years, so we'll have two million boxes by 2028, and there's demand for all of them. Can you fill demand? No. Nowhere near. This is now a $120 million-a-year business. But it would be worth a lot less if consumers weren't paying twice as much for an organic apple free of genetic modification. It's absolutely clear that GMOs have no place in high-end, premium products. Why? It's the consumer. The consumer perception. For whatever reason, they don't want it. So we tested that consumer perception on the streets of New York. If you're using genetically modified organisms, you don't know what those things are going to do in your body, so you wanna not put that in your food. You really can't trust it. You don't know what is being made with your food. And London. I think sustainable natural approach is always preferential. I think if it's free-range organic, it's better for the environment. I definitely buy the lamb from New Zealand because it tastes very good, but I know the country's very nice and lovely; lots of pastures and outdoorsy people. I'm sure the quality of food must be great. Meanwhile, back in the parched hills of Hawke's Bay, the people that grow that lamb are just as proud of our food's pure and premium reputation. They like New Zealand's way of grass-fed, animals out in the environment in a more natural state. But they're hurting. Losses upon losses are probably starting to accumulate every time we get these dry periods. Drought after drought, year after year, has dried up stock numbers and incomes. Does the answer lie in the laboratory? When we come back... And this is it? This is it. The magic bullet. Inside this Palmerston North glasshouse lies a drought breaker which could also drastically cut our greenhouse emissions. There's just one catch. It's genetically modified, and that's a controversial technology. Why field-test and expose ourselves to the risk that it will escape out and do so much damage to us? It seems extraordinary. 2 Drought. Greenhouse emissions. The answer to agriculture's biggest problems may lie inside this Palmerston North greenhouse. The idea behind these is that we don't track any seeds or pollen when we leave. For the past 15 years, AgResearch scientists have been working on genetic modification which could revolutionise farming. And this is it? This is it. The magic bullet. They've created a drought-resistant ryegrass which can also dramatically reduce nitrogen in waterways and methane going into the atmosphere. It's actually almost unprecedented at the moment that anyone has made such a breakthrough of enhancing photosynthesis in crops. You're saying it'll grow faster? Yes. And reduce greenhouse emissions? That's right. So we've actually physically measured that and methane has been reduced by 15% and 23%. But the grass, developed here in New Zealand, is off for field-testing in America next week because of our strict regulations around genetic modification. Is there a downside? If you think about all the benefits, I kinda think the downside is the fact that it's genetically modified and that it's a controversial technology. If you actually took that away from the equation and looked at what the benefits are, it's really just upside. Even if the trials are successful, Hastings's GM-free status would stop it being grown in the drought-prone Hawke's Bay. That farmer choice for new technology around GM, looks to be taken away from us. Will Foley of Federated Farmers says other producers shouldn't have the right to impose their standards on neighbours. It may not be the ryegrass, it might be something else. But farmers just need that choice, so when a new technology comes along, we can explore it and debate it, whether it's good or not. Is there any way that you can co-exist? I don't think so. John Bostock sells organic and conventionally produced food all over the world. You've got New Zealand's brand and New Zealand's image, and it's very hard to have your cake and eat it. How can we say we're the absolute clean and green and pure country, and at the same time introduce a technology that consumers all around the world are rejecting? But could Hasting's GM-free status be taken away with the stroke of a minister's pen? I'm trying to get more houses built. Red tape is getting in the way of it. So Environment Minister Nick Smith has drawn up Resource Management Act reforms that will make it easier for him to override local council decisions. It might be aimed at housing but it could also take away Hastings' GM-free status. The Minister wants to grab the power and say he knows everything, and he'll have the right to override local communities' wishes. And that, to me, is absolutely wrong. Are you saying you don't trust Nick Smith? Well, it could be a bit like that. It is not really based on sound science. Nick smith doesn't believe in GM-free zones. I'm very supportive of producers saying their product is GM-free. But it's quite a different thing to say, 'Hey, buy a Hawke's Bay apple, not a Gisborne one,' because somehow our council's declared ourselves GM-free, but it's meaningless. Sound science or not, worldwide consumers are saying they don't want it and more regions are declaring themselves GM-free. Champagne and Provence in France, Bavaria in Germany, Tuscany in Italy and Tasmania, to name just a few. Do you think the consumers are right? Well, the consumer's always right. (LAUGHS) Do you think they're correct? The consumer perception may not be entirely logical, but if there's a consumer movement right across the world that's saying no to GMOs, we're mad not to listen to them. Hastings, the Far North and Whangarei have declared themselves GM-free while Auckland has prohibited genetically modified organisms in its unitary plan. And that's where Nick Smith rears up. I'm not gonna have people dying on my watch because of stupid council rules around GMO. He's concerned Auckland Council's GM-free status would prevent a promising liver cancer trial at Auckland Hospital. I have made plain that if councils such as Auckland impose rules that stop people getting treatment for things like liver cancer, then, yes, I will use those powers. The Hastings district plan allows for GM medicines or vaccines and research. Let's make that absolutely clear. We are not stopping or against science or even GM science that's done in the lab. What we're against is releasing into the environment, willy-nilly, these GMOs so that we will never get back our GMO-free status. It's a bit like possums or gorse or rabbits. Once released you'll never get it back again. A delegation including Hastings mayor Lawrence Yule, John Bostock and iwi chair Ngahiwi Tomoana went to Wellington to put their side to Nick Smith. It didn't go well. His first question was, 'How are you qualified to talk on this issue?' And then he basically berated us. He was extraordinarily rude and he wouldn't listen to a word we said. Yes, it was a robust discussion. He said he's a doctor, 'So I know more about it than you.' I had the view, and that is that for Hawke's Bay producers to market their horticultural products as being superior to those that come from my own constituency in Nelson or from those in Gisborne, when all of New Zealand currently is effectively GM-free, is a misnomer, and is more marketing spin than substance. If he was in our environment, he wouldn't have got out of there in one piece. I gave them the courtesy of meeting them in my ministerial office. I think they simply disagree with me. Both sides are talking but no one seems to be listening. The provisions were never aimed or designed to challenge councils around their positions on GMOs. It could be used for that purpose, but so could the existing law. With all due respect to Nick Smith, he's not in the marketplace every day and he probably needs to get out there and understand what's happening. It'll now be up to Parliament to decide. I'm quite confident that we'll get the RMA bill through. We're going to be having further discussions with the Maori Party, which I'm sure will include these issues of genetic modification on which I'm pretty relaxed about. John Bostock just hopes the family business he grew alongside his late wife, Vicki, can keep its promises to consumers. She's very much here in her spirit and her ideals. She very much believed in community and creating a better place. It was never really about us, it was about trying to make the world a little bit better. The second reading of the RMA reforms passed in parliament this week with the backing of the Maori Party. Maori Party co-leader, Marama Fox, said they will keep talking to the government about ways to protect GM-free zones. So, what do you think? Should regions be allowed to call themselves GM-free? Go to our Facebook page and tell us. Up next, Auckland mum Lyndie Dawson-Clarke on the moment she found out her son was dead after a trip to the Amazon ended in tragedy. So why is the new 'it' drug, ayahusaca, becoming so popular. My world stopped that day. So now I had a son apparently dead. I didn't know where he was, and this is my world. It doesn't happen to people like me. Inside they're preparing for their ayahusaca ceremony. We are allowed to watch but the whole thing is gonna happen in darkness. (MAN WHISTLES SONG) 4 Welcome back. There's a new 'it' drug, a natural high called ayahuasca, and every year thousands of young travellers are heading to Peru to try it. It's considered a medicine by some who claim it can cure everything from cancer to heroin addiction. But for others, like Matthew Dawson-Clarke's family, it's a nightmare. We go to Peru, to the Amazon, to find out how the 24-year-old Kiwi died and why. Hamish MacDonald with the story. (SOLEMN MUSIC) (PHONE RINGS) It was a Sunday afternoon. (PHONE CONTINUES TO RING) The phone was ringing, and usually I'll ignore it, but for some reason I thought, 'Oh, I've got to get that call.' Hello? It's Lyndie here. And then I got this really heavy accent that came through, saying, 'Is that, um... Is that Matthew's mum?' And I remember thinking, 'Who's this?' I'm sorry. Who are you? And she said to me, 'I'm so sorry for your loss.' At that point my heart just stopped. And I think I started screaming at her. And I just said, 'What are you talking about?' And she said, 'I was on a retreat with your son. Matthew died. He died three days ago.' (CRIES) My world stopped that day. So now I had a son apparently dead. I didn't know where he was. And this is my world. You know? That doesn't happen to people like me. And it doesn't happen to my son. Like so many young people from this part of the world, Matt was living and working in London. From there, he got work on a superyacht taking clients through the waters of the Mediterranean all the way to the Caribbean. Matt had a lot of promise, and the saddest part of it all, apart from losing our boy, is that the opportunity of seeing what he was going to become, we're not going to have. Yeah, landing on each other would be shit. Let's not do that, OK? (SCREAMS) On the 6th of September 2015, Matthew Dawson-Clarke's family, at home in Auckland, desperately start searching for information. They reached the tour operator in Peru, Andy Metcalfe, and record the call. Uh, he's currently in the Iquitos morgue. FATHER: In where? To have to say goodbye to one of your kids, all you know is you want as much of them back as you can get. MOTHER: This is our son. Of course. Of course. Do you have anyone that can help us there find our son? It turns out Andy Metcalfe had told other members of the retreat he'd broken the news to Matt's family. He told them that he had told the parents what had happened. So he lied. He never told us at all. He has acknowledged that since. (SALSA MUSIC PLAYS) Iquitos holds a lot of the answers, not just about Matt's death but also about why so many people are being drawn to ayahuasca. This ancient custom, once confined to the Amazon, has spread like wildfire on the Internet. It's now even available in countries like Australia and America. Freddie Findlay is a British expat who lives here. Stunning area. Yeah. It's lovely. From a successful child actor in London to a drug addict living on the streets of Peru's capital, Lima, he's now an apprentice shaman, a traditional healer. Tonight, Freddie's agreed to host us for an ayahuasca ceremony. This is... (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) OK. (PANTS) Best way to start the day. Ayahuasca only grows in the Amazon jungle, and when brewed with other plants, it's one of the most powerful hallucinogens on Earth. It's illegal in most Western countries, but not here in Peru. Each retreat has its own recipe. If you just drank this by itself, um, you would just purge. You know, you would just vomit and go to the bathroom. Um, but the combination of the ayahuasca and the chacruna and the other two things is what makes the brew. (WHISTLES) You know, I guess, I've always had a history of drug abuse, um, you know, from having quite a good career and earning some good money. Um, you know, having a lot of things. I lost everything. What proportion of the people do you think coming here are trying to deal with an addiction of some form? A lot of them. Some people have, you know, an addiction to marijuana. Other people that are doing heroin. Other people are doing coke. You know, whatever it is, you know, there's a lot of them coming. So how effective do you think it is as a mechanism for dealing with addiction? I think it's very effective and I will say that I'm living proof of it. (DOG BARKS) How safe is it to come here and try this? Um, it's very safe. Again, as long as you're with the right person, you know, the right people. You know how this works. Nothing happens like that. (CLICKS FINGERS) People come here to drink ayahuasca for all sorts of reasons. There are the sick and vulnerable, people with addictions and with post-traumatic stress. I feel now like totally symmetric, and before I felt absolutely asymmetric. But there's also the younger crowd. A lot of them just come for the adventure. Well, the afternoon light is disappearing pretty quickly, and inside they're preparing for their ayahuasca ceremony. We are allowed to watch, but the whole thing is going to happen in darkness. What we're going to do now is prepare the medicine. We're going to... (SPEAKS INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE) We're going to sing to the medicine. (MAN WHISTLES) The ceremony will continue for the next five or six hours as will the singing and the purging. Salute. ALL: Salute. (SINGS IN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE) (CONTINUES SINGING) (PERSON BURPS) (SINGS) Up next, piecing together the puzzle. What happened to Matthew on the night of his death? It begins the morning after a wild night of dancing around the fire. In preparation for another ayahuasca ceremony, Matthew drinks a powerful brew of tobacco tea, part of the cleansing ritual. Within 15 minutes, he feels unwell. I did everything in my power to save their son. He's a 24-year-old kid, for God's sake. He shouldn't be dead. He went there to go better himself. (MAN WHISTLES) 4 I think about Matt every day, even though I don't let myself think about it for very long. After Matthew Dawson-Clarke's death, his parents began contacting the other guests from the retreat to find out what happened. They reached Richard from Texas. (ENGINE REVS) There is not one day that has gone by that I haven't thought about him or his family and the pain they must have been going through and are going through right now. Talking about his ayahuasca journey could cost Richard his job, so we've agreed to keep his identity and his real name secret. Like many others, he hoped this drug would relieve his PTSD brought on by working as a paramedic with the fire department. Instead, it only made things worse. I-I'm still... I feel more lost now than I was when I started, and the shameful thing is is that I was on my way. You know, I was almost there. Here's what we understand happened to Matt on the 3rd of September 2015. It begins the morning after a wild night of dancing around the fire. In preparation for another ayahuasca ceremony, Matthew drinks a powerful brew of tobacco tea, part of the cleansing ritual. Within 15 minutes, he feels unwell. He says he thinks he's been poisoned. Matt is attended by the shaman who prepared the tea, Don Lucho, and a helper, Carolina. At one point during the day, they cycle Matt's legs as if to maintain circulation. My intuition as a medic, as someone who's been doing this job for a while, was that something wasn't right with Matt. Richard, the paramedic, offers help but is turned away at the door by Carolina. It's not until the very end of the day, at 5pm, when Matt goes into cardiac arrest that Richard is finally enlisted to help. Does he have a pulse or something? Does he feel cold? I realised that I was the only person there that was medically trained. No one had any first-aid training or CPR training at all. A frantic effort begins ` CPR, a vehicle to get Matt to hospital. Deep in the Amazon, it's a dangerous and difficult journey. The vehicle gets bogged. It even tips over. Eventually, making it down the river, just before midnight, Matthew Dawson-Clarke's body is released to the morgue. Richard is still deeply troubled by the events of that week. I mean, he's a 24-year-old kid, for God's sake. He shouldn't be dead. He went there to go better himself, to become a better person, a better human being. You know, I'm sorry that I couldn't... I tried, you know. I tried. (LAUGHS NERVOUSLY) Sorry. I-I... Yeah, (STUTTERS) I-I-I tried so hard. I did everything in my power to save their son. The striking thing about Matt's death is that no one has ever been held accountable. In the year and a half since, another five people have died in this region in connection with ayahuasca retreats. The investigation into Matt's death was closed last year, and the shaman, Don Lucho, is still operating Kapitari, the retreat where Matt died, and still offering that same tobacco tea. That's where I'm heading now. It's fair to say that this place is remote. It's taken us two boat journeys to get here, a good` Buenos dias. Buenos dias. ...a good 30 to 40 minutes walking deeper into the jungle. There is no phone reception or patchy reception and no electricity. If something goes wrong out here, you're a long way from help. Finding Don Lucho may help answer some of the many questions about Matt's death. Well, there's Kapitari. (PANTS) Hola. (WHOOPS) Buenos dias. We're hoping to speak to Don Lucho, if that's possible? (WOMAN TRANSLATES) Don Lucho? Yeah. It turns out the man we've come here to find has gone to town for the day. So we race back to the port to find Don Lucho is waiting. We just have a few questions about the death of Matthew Dawson-Clarke. We're looking into his case. Um, I'd like to understand why you didn't take him to hospital that day. (SPEAKS SPANISH) But he took the tobacco tea very early in the day and immediately he said that he thought he'd been poisoned. And it wasn't until 5pm when you asked others for help. And have you got anything you want to say to Matthew Dawson-Clarke's parents? Don Lucho might say there's no issue with tobacco teas, but in the very same year that Matt died, a young Canadian woman died after drinking one too. (SPEAKS SPANISH) Don Lucho says Matt's death is not his fault. Remember the tour operator, Andy Metcalfe, from the phone calls? He's never been held accountable either. I want to know if we might be able to talk to you for this story. After initially agreeing to see us one day,... We'd like to talk to you and get your version of things. I'm willing to talk to you. I'd rather not be on camera, though. Yeah. That' OK. ...when it comes to meeting the next day, Andy is giving us the slip. He's about to disappear into the jungle where he now owns his own retreat. And he's texted saying he's too busy. On a tip-off, we learn that's not quite true. Andy is, in fact, just down the road having lunch at the Karma Cafe. Sorry. I heard you were down here so I thought I'd come and say hi. Guys like Andy make a lot of the money in this largely unregulated industry, often more than the local shaman do. You know, clearly, there were people that were very upset. A lot of things were said. A lot of people are still trusting Andy Metcalfe with their lives in these remote jungle retreats, so we decide to secretly record his response. But what about things like first aid and training and, like, plans if things go wrong? I mean, I guess when you accept the money, you take some responsibility, right? Shit happens. It's always going to happen, you know. Shit happens? Well, that's not how Matt's family sees this. The reality is that Matt Dawson-Clarke paid $US650 to go to a retreat ` Kapitari ` that we've learned was and still is operating illegally. And when things went wrong for Matt, it was another tourist, Richard from Texas, who had to try and save him. I was the one who had to take charge of this whole situation. There was no help. Don Lucho didn't come. He didn't come with us along the way, uh, to the... to the boat. You know, he wasn't there. I did feel` I did feel like we` Did he take responsibility for Matt? I've never... I've never heard him take responsibility. And he's saying that he had told the parents. Was he telling the truth? I would say not. So, will anyone ever be forced to take responsibility for this death? Since we've been working on this story, there's been a huge development. Matt Dawson-Clarke' family lodged a formal complaint with the Peruvian authorities. That's now led them to re-open the investigation. As a result, Don Lucho is now inside this building making a pointed claim to the prosecutor that Matthew Dawson-Clarke may have been using other drugs just before coming to the retreat. Now, Matt did tell others on the retreat that, like many young people, he'd use some drugs in the past. But the claim made by Don Lucho is not supported by any actual evidence. (SPEAKS SPANISH) Andy Metcalfe says that he takes no blame for what happened, that he was just a middleman. Don Lucho hasn't been charged, and convictions for ayahuasca-related deaths are very rare. After the break, back in Auckland Matthew's parents are still fighting for justice and for answers. READS: 'Possible nicotine toxicity' which fits exactly with what we believe to be the occasion that led to him being given the tobacco tea. The rumours that were proliferating out of Peru, really, just were to give themselves, they thought, some breathing space, I believe, because, at the end of the day, they're too easily disproved. 3 Well, our story returns now from Peru to Auckland to Matthew's resting place with his parents. So, what we have here is one of the autopsy reports that has come out of Peru. Matthew Dawson-Clarke's family has now spent a year and a half fighting for justice and fighting for answers. They're referring to the comment about drugs such as cocaine or methamphetamine. READS: No information regarding this in the case. Neither of these drugs were detected by the post-mortem and tox analysis. The post-mortem from Peru blames pneumonia leading to cardiac arrest for Matt's death. But in New Zealand, so far a coronial inquest remains inconclusive. And an autopsy report points to possible nicotine poisoning. Possible nicotine toxicity which fits exactly with what we believe to be the occasion that led to him being given the tobacco tea. On the accusation about Matt using drugs before he went to Kapitari, his family and the available evidence are clear. Well, Matthew wasn't a drinker. He certainly wasn't a methamphetamine addict. Our belief is pretty simple. The rumours that were proliferating out of Peru, really, just were to give themselves, they thought, some breathing space, I believe. Because, at the end of the day, they're too easily disproved. But you do, though. That's the thing. There's a part of you that's going to be forever empty. It can't be undone, and you go through regular periods where you just actually, um, you just want to go and be with him, and that's often at the expense of those that are still with us while you're alive, because it's very easy to just go, 'I don't want to be here any more.' It took a very long time. Lyndie Dawson-Clarke even had to fight just to get Matt's belongings back home from Peru. This is my place of remembrance. What is it about the physical things, do you think? It reminds me. I mean, every day when I go walking in the morning, as I'm coming down the driveway, I yell out to the universe, 'I have a son. His name is Matthew James Dawson-Clarke.' Because people forget and their lives move on. But for me, my life stopped that day, and I have to remember that I have a son. These physical things remind me that he was my boy and he lived here and he still does live here. She wants anyone thinking about ayahuasca to know the risks. I think, for me personally, it wasn't the ayahuasca that took my son, it was the tobacco purge that took my son. They need to be aware that it may not be right for everybody. And if you are really a healthy individual, what are you putting into your system? And the possibility of you dying can happen. I'm not here to tell people what to do with their lives, I'm just here to say, 'Be aware.' How would you describe what it is you've been through? It's now been... 16 months of darkness and... of torment and of me, searching for my son, trying to because my belief was that he was in such agony when he died and I wasn't there to save him. (SORROWFUL MUSIC) And Don Lucho continues to run his Kapitari shamanic retreat in the Amazon rainforest. Well, a peek ahead at next week. We journey down Canterbury's Selwyn River where we ask has all the pristine alpine water gone. 17km of pure, pristine water... It's gonna end up in the Selwyn River or in the ocean in a hell of a lot worse condition than what it started out as. Is the river dying? I definitely think it is. Yeah. And it's probably the first of many in New Zealand unless we start changing our attitudes. Over the past 12 years, the number of dairy cows being farmed here in the Selwyn district has doubled to more than 90,000. And that's been possible because of one thing ` water, most of which is pumped from below the ground. Here's the river. Where's it gone? Well, this is all that's left of it, and it's only because they dug a hole for it here. Yes. Plus I'll take you to my family bach, next to one of the most poisoned lakes in the country. Well, that's our show for tonight. But before we go, it's our 15th anniversary here at Sunday. We are proud of our programme and grateful to everyone that's trusted us with their story. And we'd like to thank you for your ongoing support over the last 15 years. Nga mihi maioha ki a koutou mo o koutou tautoko. Do join us on Facebook and Twitter, Sunday TVNZ, and thanks for joining us this evening. Nga mihi nui, hei kona.